Day 4
I’m ordered by the Court to cease reporting on this trial.
This morning I was called into the closed Court by Judge Harrop and shown an extract of my blog from Day 2. The extract contained a photo of Adi Leason that I captured from a TV3 broadcast, and a paragraph that I wrote saying that legal argument had taken place.
Judge Harrop never mentioned the photo, but he said that the mention of things which happened in the absence of the jury was against the court reporting rules in New Zealand.
He ordered me “to desist from any further reporting of this trial until after it is finished” and he reminded me of his powers to find me in contempt and imprison me for the duration if I disobeyed his order.
Upon my request he allowed me to publish his order, and explain the sudden absence of reports on this site about the trial.
I WILL OBEY the Judge’s orders, because I agree with him that no-one wants to see this trial aborted. Indeed, I have gone further and removed the offending paragraph.
The freedom of speech around court hearings is an important part of democracy, and one I will take up after this trial is over – but it is not the central issue just now. The central issue is the conscience, action and trial of Adi, Peter and Sam.
You can read a report about Day 4 of the trial (which is NOT written by me) here:
Hi. Thanks for keeping us in the loop. It’s a shame that you can’t keep up with your reporting as I was finding it very informative and really liking being kept up to date with what is happening. The mainstream media has such little snippets of news that it is hard to really tell what is going on.
Go well.
Madz
I’m very concerned about the bullish behavior by Judge Harrop in this instance. Threatening to put an innocent in jail for reporting while the jury was not in attendance? I think a simple mild instruction would have been more than enough.
It seems this irrational, unreasonable, antisocial behavioral episode exhibited by judge Harrop in the form of a power tantrum is nothing more than institutional violence against a fellow New Zealander … shame, shame.
Could it be possible that Judge Harrop is one of the Queen’s jesters … who has pledged allegiance to the Queen of England rather than the people of New Zealand? Could it be possible that New Zealand is a so-called ‘commonwealth’ nation ruled by the malevolent benevolence of the high end welfare cases who refer to themselves as British ‘royalty’?